What if an American survival story was told from the perspective of a young English woman, running away from the colonisers who brought her to the New World? In Lauren Groff’s stunning new novel, The Vaster Wilds, a girl with many names leaves the Jamestown colony in Virginia, alone, and heads into the wilderness. There she encounters fear and beauty in nature and considers the events that led to her flight. Lauren will discuss sisterhood, strong characters and writing historical fiction with writer and podcast presenter Naomi Frisby.

Described as a writer ‘who can do everything – dialogue, structure, the throb and hum of inner life – so brilliantly’, Lauren is the bestselling, three-time National Book Award finalist author of Florida, Matrix and Fates and Furies. She has twice been selected by Barack Obama for his books of the year list and, in 2017, was one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists.